Houston Breakthrough, May 1980 - Page 2. May 1980. Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries. University of Houston Digital Library. Web. February 22, 2018. https://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/feminist/item/5534/show/5505.

Disclaimer: This is a general citation for reference purposes. Please consult the most recent edition of your style manual for the proper formatting of the type of source you are citing. If the date given in the citation does not match the date on the digital item, use the more accurate date below the digital item.

Disclaimer: This is a general citation for reference purposes. Please consult the most recent edition of your style manual for the proper formatting of the type of source you are citing. If the date given in the citation does not match the date on the digital item, use the more accurate date below the digital item.

Disclaimer: This is a general citation for reference purposes. Please consult the most recent edition of your style manual for the proper formatting of the type of source you are citing. If the date given in the citation does not match the date on the digital item, use the more accurate date below the digital item.

Educational use only, no other permissions given. Copyright to this resource is held by the content creator, author, artist or other entity, and is provided here for educational purposes only. It may not be reproduced or distributed in any format without written permission of the copyright owner. For more information please see UH Digital Library Fair Use policy on the UH Digital Library About page.

File Name

index.cpd

▼

Item Description

Title

Page 2

Format (IMT)

image/jpeg

File Name

femin_201109_560ab.jpg

Transcript

I:M>H*UM:
THE VOLATILE VOTER
The following report aired on All Things
Considered (National Public Radio) in
early April:
It's the year of the volatile voter. They
seem to change their minds each week.
Every Tuesday night brings a different
hero, and the traditional political maxims
have been shattered with equal regularity.
First, it was Senator Edward Kennedy
who was viewed as the powerful hero
who could have the Democratic nomination if he just asked for it. On the
Republican side it was John Connally
and Howard Baker, who were thought of
as "most likely to succeed" against Ronald Reagan. And Reagan was called a
political hemophiliac: scratch him and
he'll bleed to death. Wrong. George
Bush scratched him in Iowa and then he
had momentum. Wrong. John Anderson
was a joke. Wrong. And, finally, when
the New York primaries rolled around,
Carter had it all locked up.
What is going on here? Why are people
changing their minds from week to week?
The experts, the pollsters, and the people
who run campaigns are divided on the
reasons for this year's voter volatility.
Bob Squire who does TV ads for
Carter says things look more volatile
than they are. He remembers 1972 when
Senator Edmund Muskie came out of the
Florida primary in tatters, and went on
to win the Illinois primary. But back in
'72 the press wasn't covering primaries
with the intense week-to-week scrutiny
it does today. Back in '72 when Muskie
won in Illinois nobody seemed to care.
Says Squire, "Muskie kind of felled a
tree in a forest that didn't have any cameras in it. Now we have this much tighter
almost day-by-day coverage of all these
campaigns. I think as a result you've got
something that looks more like volatility because as it moves through different parts of the country, different
candidates strike the voters in different
ways. This country is not a homogeneous
country; the states are very different.
And yet there is a kind of tendency to
look at all this as if it's almost sports
reporting rather than political analysis.
"I was talking to someone the other
night about the fact that I think what
ABC should do four years from now is
to get rid of the political anchor people
they use the nights of the elections and
put Jim McKay up there instead. I think
McKay is proper. He has that kind of
dignified bearing and he could talk about
how Teddy Kennedy did not do so well
in school figures, but he's terrific at ice
dancing. I think that kind of analysis
would give us a better look at the whole
structure and we wouldn't feel like we're
getting all these ups and downs as we go
through the whole process."
Most campaign experts, however,
think this is a particularly volatile year.
Ronald Reagan's pollster says this is the
most volatile year he's ever seen. In New
Hampshire one-third of the Republican
electorate changed its mind in the 14
days before the election. But nothing so
befuddled the pollsters as Senator Kennedy's plummet in the polls after his
entrance into the democratic presidential
race. Here's Michael Keaghy, a Princeton
professor and pollster for the New York
Times:
"One could see Kennedy's drop as
one of the dirtiest tricks public opinion
ever played on a major presidential
candidate. Poll after poll for years
showed Kennedy very strong, and then
once the actual campaign began, that
dropped. I suspect his own pollsters have
been puzzled as to exactly how and why
that happened and other analysts are,
too."
Kennedy's sudden recovery in New
York and Connecticut was almost as unexpected as his fall from grace. Just a
few days before the New York primary,
the polls showed Carter leading by 20
points. But it was Kennedy who won by
nearly 20 points. And Kennedy's pollster,
Peter Hart, said a quarter million people
made up their minds in the last day
before the election. Hart believes the election this year allows that kind of last
minute decision-making because there is
no crusade this year like there was in
the 60s or even early 70s.
He believes that three things contributed to Carter's loss in Connecticut and
New York: "First, people were not ready
to settle yet for a Carter/Reagan race.
Second, the announcement of an 18 percent inflation rate hurt the president.
The third thing that really counted, I
think, was the Shah. With the Iranian
hostages being held, the rubber band of
the American mind had been stretched
so tight that all the sudden when they
saw the Shah leaving for Egypt, you
suddenly saw the rubber band snap. It
was semi-farce that was going on. . .
That we weren't controlling anything,
that it was out of control."
Hart believes that 1980 will continue
to be a volatile year right up to November. "We're in a transitional age of American politics and we're really not talking
about two different philosophies of
government, where the voters sort of
choose which direction we're going to
go. But, in part, most of the Democrats
and Republicans seem to be blurring the
differences, rather than saying: here are
two courses and America has to choose.
So, consequently, without having a firm,
fixed goal of society and understanding
where we are, we're forced to choose between personalities, or we choose on a
series of personal and petty single issue
votes. So my guess is yes. 1980's going
to be a very volatile year, and right to
the end. If anybody takes the voters for
granted, they're going to make a great
mistake."
It is a particular irony this year that
the voters having narrowed their field of
choice, don't like the choices they are
left with. That's the view of Republican
campaign consultant John Deerdorff,
who worked for Howard Baker. "People
are no longer as sure as they once were
that government is very important to
them, that the whole process of electing
people to public office is very relevant
to their lives, to the solution of the
problems they find themselves
confronted with all the time. So you
combine this declining confidence in government as an institution with a clear lack
of interest in the candidates. I think what
you get is a week-to-week fluctuation
in people's attitudes about which one is
better than the other, or which one is a
little bit better than the other, and the
result of that is no one knows week to
week what's happening."
Ronald Reagan's pollster Richard
Worthen points out that in states that
allow crossover voting, huge numbers
of Democrats have defected to the GOP
ranks to vote for John Anderson and
Ronald Reagan. Reagan has been particularly successful in attracting blue collar
conservative Democrats.
"We have very large numbers of
'Republican primary voters' who are
Democrats. Thus, the stability that has
been provided in the past by party loyalties is no longer there. As a result, you
get very dramatic shifts as a result of the
nature of the constituency itself."
Democratic campaign consultant Joe
Rothstein, who has done some work
for Kennedy, thinks the volatility this
year is as natural as a tidal wave after an
earthquake. "We have an electorate
that watches the news every night and
pays attention to developments. The volatility of our world is influencing the volatility of the election process. When the
economy goes from 10 percent inflation
to 18 percent inflation in a few months
time, or we go from a nation that's unable
to get 50 hostages out of a foreign
country, those generate volatile feelings
in the voters' minds. And as situations get
more dramatic and affect people's lives,
small wonder you're getting volatility."
BiiakUvuwgli
May 1980
Vol. 5, no. 4
ADVERTISING
Ailene English
CIRCULATION
Debra Thornton, Rose Wright
COPY EDITORS
Janice Blue, Gabrielle Cosgriff,Lynne Mutchler
Victoria Smith, Rose Wright
DESIGN
David Crossley
EDITORS
Janice Blue, Gabrielle Cosgriff,
David Crossley
OFFICE
Janice Blue, Rose Wright
PHOTOGRAPHERS
Daniel Bissonet, David Crossley,
Theresa diMenno, Gary Allison Morey
PRODUCTION
Janice Blue, David Crossley
Susan Hunnicut, Kathleen Packlick,
Debra Thornton, Rose Wright
PROOFREADER
Gabrielle Cosgriff
RADIO SHOW
Nancy Lane Fleming and Rita Saylors,
Co-hosts on KPFT-FM and production staff:
Blanca Balderas, Gertrude Barnstone,
Michelle Batchelder, Leslie Conner,
Jack Drake, Stella Fleming,
Marge Glaser, Karen Saylors
SPECIAL PROJECTS
Missy Hauge, Diane Rainosek, George Slanina
TYPESETTERS
Virginia Myers, Lynne Mutchler
Second-class postage paid at Houston,Texas.
Houston Breakthrough USPS 413130. is
published monthly (except for the bimonthly issues of July/August and December
/January) by the Breakthrough Publishing
Company, 1708 Rosewood, Houston, TX
77004. Mailing address: P. 0. Box 88072
Houston, TX 77004. Tel. 713/526-6686
Subscriptions are $7 (one year), $13 (two
years) and $18 (three years). Library and
institutional rates are $15 (one year),
$20 (two years) and $25 (three years).
Newsstand and single copy rate is $1.00.
This publication is on file at the International Women's History Archive in the
Special Collections Library, Northwestern
University, Evanston, IL 60201. POSTMASTER. Send form 3579 to Houston
Breakthrough, P. 0. Box 88072, Houston,
TX 77004.
HOUSTON BREAKTHROUGH